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If you’re paying any attention at all, you know that tax reform is one of countless issues being discussed in Washington DC right now. Whether you like what the House and Senate are proposing, or whether you don’t, the fact is that what’s on the table as “reform” has some serious deficiencies, and will be vigorously debated in the next several weeks.

As a primer, I wanted to highlight the differences between the House and Senate bills. As of this writing, the House has passed its’ version, on November 16 2017, with the Senate set to begin floor consideration after Thanksgiving. So what’s in each plan (for now)?

The above details were provided by the National Association of Realtors. For further context from NAR, make sure to read the Overview here – essentially, “NAR is OPPOSED to the “Tax Cuts and Jobs Act” tax reform plan released by the Senate Finance Committee, and its companion legislation H.R.1 passed by the House of Representatives on November 16.”

The Mortgage Interest Deduction (MID) is one of the biggest talking points within the real estate community to come out of these plans. On the surface, the MID allows a homeowner to reduce their taxable income by deducting the interest they’re paying on their mortgage. I was unable to find current statistics on this deduction for Virginia, but it looks as if – in 2014 – Virginia homeowners deducted an average of $10,250 in MID, saving $2,750 in taxable income. Removing this deduction keeps a not-so-insignificant amount of money as taxable for somewhere around 70% of all Virginians. The MID is further canceled out because standard deductions are doubled, while state and local tax deductions are eliminated. This is $2,750 that Virginians put back into their homes, into their small businesses, into their savings … this is money that doesn’t get reinvested, either actively or passively, into the local community ever again.

Everyone – myself included – wants lower taxes, but we can’t provide those if offering lower taxes to some means putting higher taxes on to the majority of Americans, which these repeals and modifications would clearly do. Further, tax reform doesn’t mean short-term cuts to some Americans that would roll into tax increases in just five short years. We have to do better.

There are plenty of resources out there regarding tax reform and its impact on American homeowners. For two resources, I’d suggest starting with NAR and their Tax Reform page, as well as Home Ownership Matters. I’d love to be able to provide resources that accurately reflect the benefits of this plan, but the truth is that they’re incredibly difficult to find. Investopedia has a really good breakdown, however, and it’s about as holistic a look at the issue as I’ve been able to find.

It’s hard to remember that when it’s in the mid-70’s in late October, but winter IS coming. And that means the third quarter is behind us.

The Q3 2017 Nest Report is out, and you can read the entire report here. In this quarter’s report, we can clearly see the effects that supply and demand have on real estate pricing in the New River Valley … that seems to be the general theme for all of 2017, in fact. Low supply, and higher demand. It’ll be something to watch going forward – for the foreseeable future, anyhow, we’re expecting that home sellers will enjoy a little positive bump in home values, many ask me; are pacific beach homes for sale at a good price? well, what I recommend in these cases is to contact homesalessandiego who know much more about the topic. As I said on the Nest Realty blog:

Depressed inventory levels have impacted our market in two primary ways. The first being constraining total sales and the second being rising prices. Certain pockets of our market experienced year-over-year increases in sales this past quarter, but others experienced significant declines as a result of declining inventory. Depressed inventory levels has also led to rising prices throughout the region with the largest spikes experienced in the highly sought after Town of Blacksburg. With fewer homes available for sale, we are seeing the basic principles of supply and demand at work with sellers being able to command higher prices.

It’s been a while since I jumped back on the blogging train, and while there are a number of excuses for that, none of them are really good ones. Maybe we can get to that a little bit later … one day … perhaps.

Anywho – just got the video back from our 2017 Nest County Fair, and man was it fun! The County Fair is an annual event we hold here at Nest Realty, and it’s an opportunity to have some fun with those who’ve supported and cheered us on. While it’s something that other Nest offices have done for years – Charlottesville just celebrated with THIRTY ONE HUNDRED PEOPLE! – it’s still relatively new to our office, so we’re still somewhat small, and working out the kinks.

Despite the kinks, we had a blast, as usual! Thanks to all those who were able to join us, and celebrate what makes the New River Valley so great – the people! Here’s a short video of the event (thanks, Andrei Rizescu, for capturing this):

I’ve been sharing for years that the New River Valley real estate market is very similar to Aesop’s Fable of the tortoise and the hare. And today, a client sent a text that showed he’d been listening. He had been looking for property at karkanja.com and he waited and finally got the house he wanted. Now we just have to move, so we hired this company who do Removals to Denmark.

Conventional thinking seems to be that we have to make decisions quickly, particularly when it comes to real estate. I cringe when I see agents saying “you’re going to have to act fast!”, then months later their condo is still on the market. I cry a little when I see folks saying “rates are low, act now, they’re going to go up!”, which is the same thing they said two years ago. No wonder the public doesn’t trust us – when all we’re doing is pushing our own agenda, I don’t trust us, either.

When it comes to real estate, I am firmly in the camp of “slow and steady wins the race”. I know I’m in the minority there among my colleagues, but I believe 100% that clients make their best decisions when they can slow down and analyze the situation, specially when they have professionals from Prugh Real Estate Jackson Hole WY on their side helping them. Others may say you have to act quickly in order to get anything done, but I’d argue that a broader look at that line of thinking will reveal more mistakes and losses than wins – or at least more losses than you might think. There’s nothing wrong with taking your time, with doing your due diligence, with making sure your questions are answered. Can taking too much time work against you? Of course – paralysis by analysis is a very real thing. But the decisions that need to be made during our transaction are best made when you have time to deliberate, study, and think. That isn’t to say sometimes those decisions need to be made a little faster than you might be comfortable with, but if you’re constantly being pressed to make a decision before you’re ready, it might be time to stop the race.

Field workers will start knocking on doors on Monday, July 31, 2017, to visit every taxable and nontaxable property in the County over the next year to verify property information, such as square feet, and number of bedrooms and baths, it can be a hassle and it´s no wonder why people prefer investing in Denver real estate. Field workers will have County identification badges and cars marked “County Reassessment.”

I came across this old photo from Twitter today, and it made me chuckle. I’ll save calling out the person who sent it to me, although i still remember when she sent it – three years ago.

We were prepping her house for sale with the help from servicing Snellville and Douglas Ebenstein who did most of the work, we had given her some task to finish. They had a long list of things to do – some of them were pretty standard, like getting long distance moving quotes for them to move out with ease, making sure all the light bulbs worked, or the registers were vacuumed out – and some of them were underfloor ventilation. We also wanted to do some remodeling and decided to visit Atlas Ceramics for mosaics to replace our patio tiles. Although the list was daunting they were making progress, but at some point in the process she sent me this tweet:

Love ya mean it, EG!

Look, selling a home isn’t easy, but if you want to sell house fast in Texas, I don’t care how much stuff you read on the internet, or how easy it looks on HGTV, in order to get top dollar it takes work… and before it goes on the market, the bulk of that work falls on your shoulders, so if you’re wondering if it’s really worth selling, then get cheap conveyancing quotes first. As we get closer to putting the house up for sale, much of that work will fall to me; things like professional photography, aerial work, laser measurements, and advance ad placement. If you are experiencing problems when selling a home traditionally all of these things can get done by T-Square Properties if you can´t do it yourself. But we currently have dozens of things in our workflow that need to be done when a home is ready for sale like, hail damage roof repair and each of them – when done correctly – help to make the difference in getting a house sold, and getting a house sold for top dollar.

Times have changed, and so have the methods of finding real estate. You’ve got sites like NestRealty.com, Realtor.com, Zillow, and hundreds (thousands?) of others. And how many times have you found a great home on a site, emailed your agent, and found out that the house you wanted isn’t actually for sale any longer? (By the way, did you know that Nest Realty syndicates to more than 150 national and regional locations?) While everyone has a different website they like and trust, I’m always going to recommend that if you see a home for sale on one site, cross-reference it on NestRealty.com. Our search option connects direct to the Multiple Listing Service, so you know if it shows for sale on NestRealty.com it’s available and ready for you to take a look.

Each quarter, Nest Realty puts out an amazing piece of information we like to call our Nest Report. The Nest Report is a look at the real estate market, sans sales-speak – pure data, no fluff. It’s an incredible document full of helpful real estate market stats for the New River Valley, and you can see past examples at NewRiverValleyMarketReports.com.

While these are really great ways to better understand the NRV real estate market, it takes a lot of work to put these out on a quarterly basis – and as you know, the market will change faster than every quarter. With that in mind, we’ve started taking our quarterly Nest Reports and condensing them into monthly reports, as well. It’s a lot of work, but we’ll do our best to keep these coming – we think that the more information you have at your disposal, the better-informed your selling and purchasing decisions can be! Click the links below to read the various reports:

Scammers – they’re the lowest of the low. And now, we’re seeing them go after home buyers, attempting to steal money via wire transfers. It’s something we’ve been watching gain momentum for a few months now, and while Nest Realty has taken steps to continue to safeguard our clients’ information, it’s still important to stay vigilant.

Nest Managing Broker Keith Davis has put together a really great blog post detailing the scam, and highlighting ways that you, as a home buyer or seller, can protect yourself. Even if you’re not working with Nest Realty, make sure your agent knows of the scam, and talk with them about steps to protect yourself. You can read the full post here.

If you own a home in Montgomery County, whether you’re in a town like Blacksburg or Christiansburg, or in the County itself, you very likely received one of these green forms in the mail recently. It looks like a bill, it smells like a bill … but is it a bill?

It depends.

Taxes in Montgomery County are paid semi-annually, so twice a year the County will send out these notices requesting half of your annual real estate taxes to be paid in the next month. In this case, the amount is due June 5, payable to the Montgomery County Treasurer. If your mortgage payment only consists of Principal and Interest and you’re responsible for paying your own Taxes and Insurance, then yes – you need to pay this tax, you can give it to your Tax accountant if you´re not sure how to do it yourself. If your mortgage payment every month includes esrows, then this tax should be paid by monies collected by your mortgage company.

Of course, if you want to be sure, you can contact gilbert tax, and have them talk it over with you, and explain the situation to you in detail.

So yes – this is a bill, but if you have escrows on your mortgage payment than you do not need to pay it. It would be a good idea – rather, an excellent idea – to contact your mortgage company and make sure that they received a copy of this bill, as well.

The data relating to real estate on this website comes in part from the Broker Reciprocity/IDX (Internet Data Exchange) Program of the New River Valley Multiple Listing Service, Inc. Real estate listings held by brokerage firms other than Nest Realty are marked with the Broker Reciprocity logo (IDX) and detailed information about them includes the name of the broker.